The latest episode of Jim Sterling's The Jimquisition tackles Steam Refunds, which he mostly sees as a great thing for consumers, while providing a small bit of sympathy to indie developers who make smaller or shorter games that could hypothetically run afoul of Steam two-hour window of play-time to be eligible for a refund.

He also pokes fun at Hatred in the intro, which I thought was pretty amusing - mileage may vary on that joke.

Epic Games announced today that its Unreal Engine 4 middleware game development tools suite can be used to create virtual reality content for Valve's SteamVR technology. Valve started sending out its HTC Vive VR headsets to game developers this week. Now those who want or already are using Unreal Engine 4 can make content for Valve's VR offering.

The support for the Vive comes from the version 4.8 preview release that came out it week. It promises support for SteamVR's unique features including room-scaling and laser-based tracking systems.

Valve has made it easier for developers with games on Steam to ban players. Under a newly deployed system, developers have the full authority to ban players, ultimately taking the burden off Steam. The new system gives developers oversight and responsibility to ban cheating or disruptive players as they see fit.

This also means that any player appeals of bans will have to be directed at the people who make the game and not Steam/Valve.

Earlier this year Valve announced that it would allow third-party developers to sell additional content via Steam Workshop, much like the company has done with first party titles. This also opened the door for mod makers in the community to sell items and content for games. It used to be that selling content for games was limited to Valve owned titles like Team Fortress 2, but now creative types will be able to make and sell their content for games via the Workshop marketplace.

The first game to do this is Bethesda's popular RPG Elder Scrolls: Skyrim.

Valve and partner HTC have launched sign-ups for developers interested in developing content for its virtual reality headset, the Vive. Those who sign up and get approved can get an early version of the Vive development kit for free. Vive development kits will be free to selected developers, which Valve says will start shipping "later this spring." More will be doled out in batches throughout the summer, though Valve is already saying that supplies will be limited.

It looks like Valve is getting into the virtual reality game with everyone else. The Steam, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress, Portal, and Counter-Strike owners announced this morning its own entry into the space called "SteamVR." Valve describes SteamVR as a "previously unannounced hardware system," which will make its formal debut at the Game Developers Conference in early March.

Valve also plans to show the reworked Steam controller gamepad, and a series of new living room devices (what it used to call Steam Machines) at the event.

According to this TorrentFreak story (by way of MCV), Valve is censoring links in Steam's chat that point to popular torrent site KickassTorrents. The site, which is one of the last huge Torrent sites in the world at this point, was taken offline last week after its Somalian domain was seized.

Maybe the Christmas Spirit moved them, or maybe they thought it should be up to the community - but whatever the reason - Valve has decided to reinstate Creative Destruction's controversial game Hatred on Steam Greenlight.

If you haven't been paying attention to the situation, Valve removed the game (which its developers describe as a mass shooting action game where you gun down people for no particular reason) from Steam Greenlight a few hours after the project went live on the service, with Valve's Doug Lombardi saying the game wasn't a good fit for Steam.

Creative Destruction's controversial mass shooter game Hatred launched a Steam Greenlight page today, but within hours of it going online Valve decided to take it down. The game was announced back in October to a mixed reaction from the community due to its violent nature and because it seemed to glorify mass shootings.

Valve's Doug Lombardi tells Eurogamer that Hatred isn't a good fit for Steam:

It looks like Valve Software has decided to tighten up the rules a bit on Steam Early Access games, according to Gamasutra. In a new post on the official Steam Partners site and in emails sent out to developer partners this week, Valve laid down some new rules for Steam Early Access games.

It's been 10 years since Half-Life 2. Hell, it's been 7 years since Half-Life 2: Episode 2.

Will we ever get Half-Life 3?

Yep, that's the poll this week. Happy voting!

Tune in to this week's podcast (streaming live Saturday night at 6p PST) and I'll explain why I don't like the original Half-Life. Or Fallout. Or Myst. Or World of Warcraft. Or Minecraft. Or Baldur's Gate. Or Telltale's The Walking Dead. Or Sonic the Hedgehog.

Valve has launched Steam Music Player, which lets users listen to MP3s while playing games in Steam. The Music Player allows users to create their own playlists, queue up mixes, listen to albums, and MP3s on your computer.

To go along with today's launch, Valve has some of the Half-Life and Portal soundtracks DLC available for free to those who own the related games and the documentary.

The PC version of first-person cooperative zombie survival game Left 4 Dead 2 has finally been reclassified in Australia with an R18+ rating (thanks Cheater87). The game, now has warnings for "high impact violence," "strong impact themes," and "mild impact language."

According to new data from the International Game Developers Association most game developers think working at Valve Software would be the best career move they could make. The data is part of the IGDA's annual Developer Satisfaction Survey. The survey, conducted by researchers at the University of Western Ontario and M2 Research polled more than 2,200 developers on a variety of topics.

Recently SteamDB published an open letter to Valve from members of Steam’s developer community concerned with some of the company’s security practices. The letter signed by 16 individuals from the Steam developer community complained that Valve does not offer rewards or bounties to security researchers who discover exploits.

Steam has broken the 8 million concurrent users milestone for the first time in its history - thanks mostly to its popular summer sale. On Sunday evening over 8 million gamers were using the service at the same time as the Steam Summer Sale began to wind down.

The last milestone for concurrent users on Steam - according to its stats page was around 7.5 million, which occurred over Christmas 2013. The new record high of 8,020,834 was recorded at 16:03 PDT on Sunday June 29.

Valve Software has banned a couple of Steam Community contributors and released a statement to its Counter-Strike: Global Offensive creators, according to this Gamasutra report. The community content creators allegedly used artwork for one of the most popular user-created weapons in the game that they did not own.

Former Valve Software director of business development Jason Holtman has joined Oculus as its new "head of platform." Holtman served in his former role for eight years. In his new position at the virtual reality hardware company, Holtman will work closely with the head of platform engineering and head of worldwide publishing to lead the company's business development and forge new partnerships.

Valve has updated the official FAQ for Early Access releases on Steam, now noting that games purchased by consumers within this program "may never be finished." The new warning from Valve in the Steam Early Access, is an answer to the question, "When will these games release?" The answer, according to Valve's update:

Curve Studios design director Jonathan "Bidds" Biddle has found himself in the spotlight today after tweeting that Valve will be making dramatic changes to its Steam Greenlight program. Biddle said on Twitter that the system, which lets users cast a "Yes" or "No" votes on pitches for potential products to be listed on Steam, will be gone by this time next year.

We met with Valve at GDC, and they say Greenlight will be gone within 12 months. They'll still offer curated space, but otherwise be open.

In a thread on Reddit, Valve front man Gabe Newell said something that surprised a lot of people: that he's okay with EA's Origin digital distribution platform running on Steam Machines. While we don't know how Steam OS and Origin would cooperate within the same environment, Newell's comments continue to illustrate Valve's commitment to being an all-inclusive platform for all kinds of games and methods of delivery, etc.

According to information coming out of Valve's Steam Dev Days event from Steamdb, Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2 content creators were paid a collective $400,000 in the first week of 2014.

"In the first week of 2014, $400k was paid out to content creators", noted Valve during the second Steam Day. The content in question is made by ordinary players in the community who then resell it to fellow players.

Valve's Steam Controller has been getting a mixed response from journalists who finally got to try out the hardware at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week. Valve recognizes that the controller still needs a lot of work and tweaking, but ultimately the goal is to make it work with all kinds of games - even games that one would think "require" the use of a mouse and keyboard.

Twelve more companies have lined up to build Steam Machines - machines meant to be used with a high definition television set in the living room that run Valve's Linux-based operating system Steam OS and support the Steam controller. This news comes from an Engadget report. Valve is set to hold its Consumers Electronics Show press conference this evening, where it will make a number of announcements related to these systems and its custom-built game-focused operating system.

If you heard that Valve's hit Zombie shooter Left 4 Dead 2 was free for a limited time but didn't get it yet - don't fret, there's still time. According to Valve's Left 4 Dead blog you have until 9 am PDT, or 1 pm EDT. From the blog:

With Valve Software pushing towards a future in which it is at the center of our big screen gaming experience in the living room using a system that is entirely powered by the Linux operating system, it should come as no big surprise that the company has joined The Linux Foundation this week. The Linux Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of the titular open-sourced operating system.

Valve Software's Mike Sartain says that joining the foundation is just one of the ways that it is putting a spotlight on the operating system.

Voting is now open for the Saxxy Awards, Valve's annual film-making awards competition. This year, the competition is exclusively based on the Source Filmmaker tool. The animation suite from Valve has been out long enough so that the community is familiar with it enough to create some amazing shorts - like the Team Fortress 2-based short about a mini-Pyro called 'Lil Guardian Pyro.'

You can check out the video to your left, and if you like it, you can vote for it here.

According to a Gamasutra report, many of the developers working on the indie title Dark Matter were laid off after the game's Kickstarter failed this summer. But that didn't stop an abbreviated version of the game hitting Steam and GOG last week. This week, the game has been yanked from those digital download services after complaints that the adventure title didn't have an ending.

Shout box

Infophile: @Matt: Apparently Dan Aykroyd actually is involved. We don't know how yet, though, but he's apparently going to be in the movie in some way.08/02/2015 - 4:17am

Mattsworkname: I still hold that not having the origonal cast invovled in any way hurts this movie, and unless the 4 actresses in the lead roles can some how measure up to the comic timing of the origonal cast, i just don't see it being a success08/02/2015 - 12:46am

Mattsworkname: Mecha: regardless of what you think of it, GB 2 was a finanical success and for it time did well with audiances ,even if it wasnt as popular as the first08/02/2015 - 12:45am

MechaTama31: I think they're better off trying to do something different, than trying to be exactly the same and having every little difference held up as a shortcoming. Uncanny valley.08/01/2015 - 11:57pm

MechaTama31: Having the original cast didn't do much for... that pink-slimed atrocity which we must never speak of.08/01/2015 - 11:56pm

Mattsworkname: Andrew: If the new ghostbusters bombs, I cant help but feel it'll be cause it removed the origonal cast and changed the formula to much08/01/2015 - 8:31pm

Andrew Eisen: Not the best look but that appears to be a PKE meter hanging from McCarthy's belt.08/01/2015 - 7:34pm

Mattsworkname: You know what game is a lot of fun? rocket league. It' s a soccer game thats actually fun to play cause your A Freaking CAR!08/01/2015 - 7:02pm

Mattsworkname: Nomad colossus did a little video about it, showing the world and what can be explored in it's current form. It's worth a look, and he uses text for commentary as not to break the immerison08/01/2015 - 5:49pm

Mattsworkname: I feel some more mobility would have made it more interesting and I feel that a larger more diverse landscape with better graphiscs would help, but as a concept, it interests me08/01/2015 - 5:48pm

Andrew Eisen: Huh. I guess I'll have to check out a Let's Play to get a sense of the game.08/01/2015 - 5:47pm

Mattsworkname: It did, I found the idea of exploring a world at it's end, exploring the abandoned city of a disappeared alien race and the planets various knooks and crannies intriqued me.08/01/2015 - 5:46pm

Andrew Eisen: Did it appeal to you? If so, what did you find appealing?08/01/2015 - 5:43pm

Mattsworkname: Its an interesting concept, but it's not gonna appeal to everyone thats for sure,08/01/2015 - 5:40pm

Andrew Eisen: That sounds horrifically boring. Doesn't sound like an interesting use of its time dilation premise either. 08/01/2015 - 5:36pm

Mattsworkname: an observer , seeing this sorta frozen world and being able to explore without any restriction other then time. no enimes, no threats, just the chance to explore08/01/2015 - 5:34pm